Mary Lynn
Ritzenthaler examines the glass surface of the encasement
containing pages from the Constitution, above. Below, a
sheet is palced on specially made paper before being
placed in an airtight container in order to test the
moisture content.

Finding freedom at their fingertips

Sage professor involved
in efforts to protect nation's most important documents

By ALAN WECHSLERStaff writer

It is one of the most important
documents in the United States, and George Tucker never
forgot that as he labored for days a few feet above pages
of the U.S. Constitution.

That the 214-year-old document has
survived at all is testament to the value that this
country has placed on

these pages of parchment.
They were continually rolled and unrolled during their
early years, to show their words to various founding
fathers. They were hidden in an unused gristmill during
the War of 1812, kept safe as the British burned
Washington, and brought to Fort Knox during World War II.

And
still the words of our founding fathers are visible on
its original parchment - a little fadded by light and
time - but otherwise as bold as the men who thought them
up.

The Constitution as well as the Bill of Rights and the
Declaration of Independence have not been exposed to air
since 1952, when they were enclosed in a total of nine
large glass cases filled with helium and a small amount
of humidity and sealed with lead.

Enter Tucker, professor of physics at The Sage
Colleges. He is part of a team of scientists, backed by
NASA, who have been using lasers to determine how well
the seal around the document held up in the past 50 years.
His work is part of a five-year, $4.8 million project
aimed at keeping the nine pages of the Constitution, the
Declaration of Independance and the Bill of Rights as
safe and as age-free as possible.

For Tucker and other scientists, the work done thus
far has meant spending hours standing only a few feet
from three pages of the document this country is founded
on.

"We never forget it for a minute," he said.
"Can you imagine if you did anything to that
document? It was like skating on thin ice."

Tucker, 53, who grew
up in Menands and now lives in Nassau, was
recommended by a freind for involvement in what
the U.S. National Archives calls "The
Charters of Freedom Rencasement Project."

Six
years ago, he took a sabbatical from Sage to help
develop a low-power laser that could measure
water vapor. The laser was used to sample air
quality over the South Pacific and was to be used
on an unmanned Mars project that csashed into the
planet in December 1999.

It was while he was in the South Pacific that
the call came came for Tucker - his country
needed him.

"They discovered some years ago that the
glass that encased the documents was
deteriorating." said Susan Cooper, a
spokeswoman for the archives. "While they
didn't consider it an emergency ... we began
thinking about what the perfect new encasement
could be."

But before they could do that, they had to
figure out if the atmosphere that had kept the
parchment so safe for the past 50 years was
helium or just air that had leaked in. So Tucker
had to alter his laser from measuring hundreds od
feet to only a half-inch - the thickness of gas
inside the chamber where the documenta are kept.

The work made for
some surreal moments. Their first project, to
test three pages of the Constitution that are
currently not on display, began about the same
time in 1999 when President Clinton was going
through the impeachement process.

"Every
night we'd go back to the hotel, and the TV would
have someone saying, 'The Constitution says
this,' " he said. "And we were reading
it from two feet away on the original paper."

The rest of the pages, along with the
Declaration of Independece and the Bill of
Rights, are kept in the rotunda on the NARA
Building, which will be shut down for two years
for renovation starting in July. Once the rotunda
is closed, Tucker and his team will return to
check the seals on the rest of the pages.

His studies found that, after half a century,
the cases that hold three pages of the
Constitution were all sealed. The tested pages
will be resealed in new cases, this time filled
with the gas argon. Eventually, all pages will be
viewable by the public.

Tucker says the time he spent near the
documents was profound and he's looking forward
to continuing his work.

"It dominates our lives, but you don't
think of it as a physical thing," he said.
"To actually be there with it, you get a
chill."